Teach­ing prac­ti­cal skills

In 2009, 45-year-old Hu Zuobin, a senior vet­eri­nar­ian from Sichuan, first went to Ethiopia as part of an agri­cul­tural ed­u­ca­tion co­op­er­a­tion pro­gram between China and Ethiopia or­ga­nized by the MOA. His job was to teach ve­teri­nary clin­i­cal di­ag­no­sis at the Alage ATVET Col­lege south of Ad­dis Ababa.

Whilst there Hu re­al­ized that the Ethiopian ve­teri­nary teach­ers had not re­ceived enough prac­ti­cal train­ing them­selves. They were there­fore not ex­pe­ri­enced enough to give demon­stra­tions to their stu­dents. As a re­sult, the stu­dents, who would be­come vets one day, lacked prac­ti­cal skills.

Given this, Hu gave stu­dents prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions of key clin­i­cal skills such as giv­ing in­tra­venous trans­fu­sions and tak­ing blood sam­ples.

“We ob­served and an­a­lyzed the col­lege’s needs and prob­lems so that we could ad­dress them ac­cord­ingly,” Hu said. “That’s how we built trust.”